Thomas J Parlette
“The Lamb of God”
John 1:29-42
1/19/20
In the chapel of the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, France, visitors will find the impressive Isenheim altarpiece painted by Matthias Grunewald in 1515. The crucifixion scene, seemingly drawn from John’s Gospel, portrays the dying Christ surrounded by his mother, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene. Surprisingly, the artist also includes the figure of John the Baptist, even though we know from the story that John was not actually present.
Facing the viewer, John the Baptist holds the open scriptures in one hand, while the other hand points to Jesus on the cross. At his feet stands a lamb with a cross in the crook of his foreleg, the ancient symbol of the Agnus Dei. The image illustrates John’s role as Christ’s “point man” – showing as well as telling onlookers who Jesus is. That is precisely what the writer of John’s Gospel does in these verses before us this morning.(1) John bestows upon Jesus the title “Lamb of God.”
After John’s Prologue, or Overture, the remainder of the first chapter of the Gospel of John is structured by a series of four days.
Day 1- The priests, Levites, and also Pharisees come out from Jerusalem to question John about his identity. Is he the Messiah? Elijah? Some sort of Prophet? And what is this baptizing about?
Day 2 – Jesus comes out to be baptized and receives the Spirit from heaven. John doesn’t actually show us the scene as the other Gospels do, he only alludes to it. Some scholars have speculated that John does this because he assumes people already know the story, why tell it again. The Gospel of John adds its own spin to Jesus’ baptism as John the Baptist recognizes Jesus’ superiority to himself and announces Jesus as “the Son of God” and “the Lamb of God.”
Day 3 – John, standing with two of his disciples, sees Jesus and proclaims him again as “the Lamb of God.” John’s two disciples accept Jesus’ call to follow him, and Simon also becomes a follower.
Day 4 – Jesus goes with these new disciples to Galilee, recruits Philip and Nathanael, and teaches them that they will see and experience even “greater things.”(2)
Our passage for today deals with the events of Days 2 and 3, both of which include a reference to Jesus as the “Lamb of God.” This title “Lamb of God” occurs in John alone among the Gospels and otherwise in the New Testament only in the Book of Revelation, where a different Greek word for “lamb” is used.
There could be many reasons why the writer of John chooses to call Jesus the Lamb of God. Keep in mind that John the Baptist spoke Aramaic, as did Jesus. And in Aramaic, the word for “lamb” is the same word for “servant.” So when John the Baptist announces, “Look, the Lamb of God,” he could also be saying, “Look, the servant of God.”(3)
John may also want us to think back to the Old Testament story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac – then at the last minute, God supplies a ram – a sheep takes the place of the son.
It could also be that John wants us to recall the triumphant lamb of Jewish apocalyptic literature who overcomes evil at the last judgment, as in the book of Revelation.
And there are other overtones to this image of the lamb of God as well. It could serve as a link between Jesus and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, who goes like a lamb to the slaughter. Or, it could be a reference to the lamb slaughtered just before the Exodus, whose blood was applied to Jewish families doorposts to spare them from losing their first born.
All of these images contain allusions to the sacrificial nature of Jesus. Jack Miles, who has explored the “lives” of God and Jesus as narratives, has written that the startling image of the Messiah as lamb radically rejects earlier biblical images of royal majesty, and that in choosing this metaphor, God, through Jesus, is choosing weakness and electing to play the role not of All-Powerful Passover Deliverer – but of the sacrificial Passover Lamb.
In Jesus, God sacrifices his Son so that he may become human, that we might know how much God loves us. And then Jesus sacrifices himself that we might know the power of God’s love – that God’s love for us is stronger than sin and death. The Lamb of God sacrifices himself to redeem us and save us.
In March 2011, and earthquake in Fukushima, Japan, shut down critical processes at the Fukushim Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing a nuclear meltdown and the release of radioactive materials into the environment. Hundreds of workers were called to clean up the site after the meltdown. Day after day, they were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in the course of their work.
Yasuteru Yamada, a 72- year -old engineer, hated the thought of all the young men who would be sickened and killed by the radiation. So he organized the volunteer force of hundreds of elderly Japanese engineers to take over the worst part of the clean -up project.
Those elderly workers knew that this work would poison them. If it didn’t kill them in the short, then they would face an increased risk of cancer in the long run. Yet they still volunteered for the work. They wanted to save the younger men from suffering and death, so they willingly volunteered to take their place.(4)
Such is the sacrifice of both God and Jesus on our behalf. In Jesus, God sacrifices His Son so that he may become human and share our state of brokenness to assure us that God is present.
Poet Christian Wiman has had a fascinating and poignant journey as a poet and a Christian. He embodies the idea of faithful witness in the midst of a broken world. One of his poems, written during his struggle with an incurable blood cancer, is entitled “Every Riven Thing.”
Wiman once said in an interview with Radio Open Source:
“Riven means broken, it means shattered or wounded or unhealed, and I think that notion is very important to me and my notion of God and of religion; that we are broken creatures, very broken creatures. And I don’t think of God as necessarily healing that brokenness as much as participating in it”
In his poem “Every Riven Thing”, Wiman offers this repeated phrase throughout the poem: “God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.” It is offered 5 times with different punctuation each time, illuminating the many ways God is found in the broken spaces of life, in essence holding us together. The poem goes like this:
“God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made
Sing his being simply by being the thing it is: stone and tree and sky, in man who sees and sings and wonders why God goes.
Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made, means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone trying to will himself into the stillness where God goes belonging.
To every riven thing he’s made there is given one shade shaped exactly to the thing itself: under the tree a darker tree; under the man the only man to see God goes belonging to every riven thing.
He’s made the things that bring him near, made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what mans, apart from what man knows, God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.”(5)
In Jesus, God comes to us. God joins us in our brokenness to experience life as we experience it. God sacrifices his son that he may become human.
Jesus then sacrifices himself to show us that God’s love is stronger than sin and death itself.
Such is the nature of the Lamb of God.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Karen M Hatcher, Feasting on the Gospels, Westminster John Knox Press, 2015, p27.
2. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1, p19.
3. Troy Miller, Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p263.
4. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No.1, p20.
5. Joseph J Clifford, Feasting on the Gospels, Westminster John Knox Press, 2015, p30.
